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Jun. 25, 2009

Recently, Ericsson has been hinting of its desire to assist wireless operators when they need a broker for mobile application stores and mobile advertising services.

Some still say that this is a whole new field for Ericsson, and one in which the infrastructure provider has limited experience in.

Nevertheless, the messages executives are relaying as part of the Ericsson Business Innovation Forum is one in which Ericsson wants to "act as a form of an industry broker". Besides executives from Ericsson, the event includes presentations from the likes of Intel, GSMA, Telenor Sweden and a few others.

Ericsson already supplies mobile brokering services in the areas of messaging and invoicing but isn't offering the types of brokering services to U.S. operators that it would like to in the areas of mobile application stores and wireless advertising.

Typically, U.S. wireless carriers and operators are slower to cooperate with one another in areas like interoperability. For example, it took over one year for SMS interoperability to be put in place and spark a text messaging revolution in the industry.

It’s critical for mobile service operators to have their own application stores, but what’s needed are open APIs (application programming interfaces) and a common GUI between multiple operators in the same country that will easily accommodate a portfolio of various mobile devices, rather than the singular app stores that so far are devoted to one platform or another.

But that process of getting wireless operators to agree on a common interface is most likely to occur over a number of years. Being able to take its expertise to the carriers and set up brokering services is one of Ericsson’s missions, according to Jan Uddenfeldt, senior v.p. and advisor of technology to Ericsson's CEO.

Uddenfeldt said Ericsson is ready for the challenge. Over the next 10 years, estimates call for mobile Internet usage to double each year. “We can handle it,” he said.

John Woodget, global director of the telecom sector for Intel, related the story of sailor Tony Bullimore and how he survived in the ocean under his upside-down boat for days before being rescued.

Then Woodget described how an "mobile industry tsunami" potentially could come rushing toward it if it doesn’t prepare for the onslaught of data-centric devices and wireless networks capable of supporting them.

Both Ericsson and Intel cited bullish projections for dramatic growth in the mobile Internet. About 50 billion connected devices are expected in the next 10 to 12 years.

It will be interesting to see how Ericsson's brokering initiative plans will be carried out in the next 3 to 6 months.

The next question is, will other companies try to get a slice of the market by emulating its efforts soon?

As always, count on Wireless Industry News to keep you informed on the latest developments.

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Source: Ericsson.